Primo Levi

“I immersed myself in The Periodic Tablegladly and gratefully. There is nothing superfluous here, everything this book contains is essential. It is wonderful pure, and beautifully translated…I was deeply impressed.”

"One of the questions I continue to hear involves the roles and responsibilities of the Dean in contrast to that of the new Executive Vice Dean. Underlying the question, there appears to be a concern that the Medical School deserves the attention of a full-time Dean." Frank Cerra

[That would be yes...]

__________

BE IT RESOLVED: That the University Senate of the University of Minnesota disapproves the Provost’s plan to dissolve the Graduate School as announced in the Feb. 9. 2009 memorandum;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: That the University Senate demands that any proposal to dissolve or otherwise to restructure the Graduate School comply with the University of Minnesota Policy on Reorganization.

[from motion passed by U of M Faculty Senate, 30 April 2009]

_______________________

It is widely recognized that the manner in which the plan to reorganize the Graduate School was decided violated all the norms of wide-spread consultation and faculty involvement in major decisions in the University.

The precedent is alarming if it portends the future of the University as a highly centralized bureaucratic decision-making apparatus that excludes the faculty from any meaningful participation.

__

Finally, an explanation for why the president [OurCEO] of the University of Minnesota...

In an e-mail obtained by The Minnesota Daily, University spokesman Dan Wolter encouraged faculty to consult with the University News Service before commenting on potential cuts.“Should you have something you’d like to share with [The Minnesota Daily] at this point, I’d urge you to consult with me or your News Service representative before responding,” Wolter said in the e-mail.“Also, if you need someone to tell them you’re declining comment, we’re happy to do that.”

_A letter signed by 18 current and former University of Minnesota Regents professors will not be enough to halt the reconstruction [sic] of the Graduate School, despite the professors’ specific request to postpone the measure.

“There was no prior consultation with faculty,” the letter states. “Only the collegiate deans — who report directly to the senior vice presidents and depend on them for their budgets — had any advance notice that this was taking place. None of the senior administrators — not even the dean — had any advance warning.” Minnesota Daily

___...to go ahead and wipe out the grad school without consulting the community — it’s really shocking,” said Kristi Kremers, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly at Minnesota. ___"I think we need a moratorium on "US News & World Report" rankings," he wrote. "We need to set aside these childish things.We need to focus more on what matters most. The ranking race drives institutions to spend money on various areas other than instruction and intellectual capital, to attract students."

William MessingProfessor, School of MathematicsUniversity of Minnesota(response to OurLeader's Spring Spam: 1/20/08)

...the panel recommends that the Dean consider undertaking an investigation to examine whether Dr. Furcht committed misconduct under Section 10 of the Faculty Tenure Code. This section includes the following ground as a basis for suspension, termination, or other disciplinary action against a faculty member:

"Egregious or repeated misuse of the powers of a professional position to solicit personal benefits or favors."Faculty Tenure Code, Section 10.21(c).12-19-03, Report of Inquiry Panel Regarding Dr. Leo Furcht Conflict of Interest

The clueless, insular way in which Furcht was appointed, and Furcht’s continued mindless arrogance, tells you all you need to know about the culture out of which endemic conflict of interest emerges in universities all over the country.Margaret Soltan, University Diaries

… in the Minneapolis Star Tribune notes that the most charitable description of what’s been going on at the clubby University of Minnesota medical school would be “bizarre.”

A professor [Leo T. Furcht] who is leading the University of Minnesota Medical School's effort to write tougher ethics rules was himself disciplined in 2004 for secretly steering a $501,000 research grant to his own company, according to university investigative reports obtained by the Star Tribune. (XII-121-08)

[Medical School Dean] Powell said Friday she did not inform the rest of the task force members about the sanctions against Furcht. "I did not think it was relevant," she said.

Frank Cerra, the university's senior vice president for health sciences, said Friday he was familiar with the case but couldn't recall details. He said Furcht's experience could help inform the conflict-of-interest committee's work.

A panel of three faculty members investigated and concluded that Furcht "committed a serious violation of the conflict of interest policy," according to a Dec. 19, 2003, report.

Among other things, they found that Furcht "knew or should have known" that he was required to disclose the financial arrangement with Baxter, because he had "a significant financial interest" in MCL and the stem-cell technology.

"In fact, it appears Dr. Furcht stands to personally gain several million dollars from the pending sale of MCL," the report said.

In November 2003, Furcht sold MCL for $9.5 million in stock, sharing 5 percent of the proceeds with the university.

---

“I think we have more administration than we need,”he said. “We need to simplify processes … and ask whether we need all the administration at all the levels.”President Bruininks - Daily, December 4, 2008

"As many of you realize, we live in a knowledge-based economy in which our fundamental mission as a University must be deployed in service of the broader transnational learning process."Provost Thomas Sullivan, November 19, 2008University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks is among the best-paid university presidents in the United States. Salary and benefits of $733,421 landed him spot No. 7 on a list of public university presidents with the highest compensation released this week by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

University spokesman Daniel Wolter said that Bruininks does not comment on his compensation but said he was "quite surprised he ranked as high as he did."(Star Tribune, XI-21-08)_______

"The $70 million needed to complete the changes [to Northrop] will come from a combination of private donors and a University bonding authority."

“The University has decided not to bring this project as, if you will, a line-item like the Bell Museum, to the state Legislature,” Rosenstone said. Daily, October 27, 2008

What's distinctive about the University of Minnesota, compared to many other universities in our society, is that we were chartered initially as a research [sic] and land grant university, if you look at the early history of the University. President Bruininks (10/22/08, Daily)

(That would be NO, Bob...)

"The University is not being paid money owed to it, reports are not generated, and so on; unless there is a clear message that these problems [with EFS] will be resolved in the next two-three months, the situation will reflect badly on the entire central administration." Senate Committee on Finance and Planning (9/23/08)

At the departmental level, I can say that no innovation at UM over the past 20 years has been so expensive in human hours. Staff in our college now do virtually nothing but thrash at EFS, curse, and plan early retirement. (comment on PTII, 10/2908)

“I don’t think anybody should put a dime into the University of Minnesota unless we use the money well, we invest it well and that we’re efficient in how we use resources.” Robert Bruininks (Daily - 9/26/08)

"The leftwing nut professors just never quit. Keep drinking that fair trade coffee. Keep charging the U of M for their blog work..."

Anonymous reader comment: 9/19/08______

"It's one thing if you're bringing in a criminal to speak. But if someone's under investigation, that's fair game," he [Parente] said.

Parente said his approach to McGuire was along the lines of: "We don't really care about the stock options. You know stuff. Tell us what you think."

It would be pretty much negligent on my part not to attempt to engage him [Dr. William McGuire.]"

Stephen Parente, director of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute in the Carlson School of Management

---------

"Obviously, the situation that happened to Francois Sainfort and Julie Jacko has not been a positive one for us," Finnegan said. (Strib, 30 August '08)

Have they been charged, tried or convicted of anything either here or in Minnesota? No? Well that does it, then. They must be guilty. Whatever happened to getting your day in court? [finne001, Aug. 30, comment on Strib article above]

I have asked Prof Julie Jacko to serve as lead faculty for the Institute for Health Informatcs (IHI).

I believe IHI needs to move forward and continue its development. Frank Cerra [21 July 2008]

"I think people will think what they want to think," Cerra said, in response to possible criticisms of appointing someone who is under investigation. [Daily: 30 July 2008]

"Our goal – and the goal embraced by the legislature and governor – is to make Minnesota the epicenter of discovery in biomedical science..." OurLeader [Daily, July 9 &16]

"A plan to make the Twin Cities a center for the emerging bio-science industry is faltering. University Enterprise Laboratories has laid of its staff and is trying to renegotiate the mortgage for its building in St. Paul. Its founders had hoped to spark a medical boom in Minnesota." MPR - July 17

"On the functional side, the thing [University Enterprises Laboratories] is just a thriving success," said Bob Elde, dean of the University of Minnesota's College of Biological Sciences. MPR - July 17

University lab bustles with activity and plans to expand.

The lab would be built next to the current bioscience incubator building.

A new building might be anywhere from 80,000 to 120,000 square feet and would probably be built on an open field next to the existing one, located on an 11-acre lot along the transitway just inside St. Paul city limits.

"I took the lead in getting that whole thing going," he [Bob Elde] said. (Daily: 10/24/06)

The great Yogi Berra once observed, "It's tough making predictions, especially about the future." OurLeader [Daily, July 9 & 16]

Here's another Yogiism to cogitate on, Bob: "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."

A majority of students at the University think the school is trying to be a top-three institution at the expense of its students. [Daily, July 2, 2008]

"To use this time to invest in some sort of cutting-edge conjecture [MoreU Park] about where residential communities might go strikes me as a stretch for a university," [State representative Alice] Hausman said, pointing out current economic and businesses struggles as other reasons to be wary. [Daily, July 2, 2008]

The architects have been given their orders and cannot change the design, Professor Balas said; if the building [Science Teaching and Student Services Buiding] is constructed as designed, it will be a disaster.

Faculty Consultative Committee - June 19, 2008

"I spoke with Mr. Wexner [tOSU Regent] directly about it, and he made it clear that a 19-year-old college sophomore is their [Victoria's Secret] target customer," Van Brimmer said. "It's not like these are Frederick's of Hollywood items."

"University Associate Athletics Director Tom Wistrcill said the school notified the company that the clothing line was not in step with the University's values and focus."

"I think we need to put ourselves in the position of acting according to the highest ethical principles. I believe our people do that now and I believe our people will be doing that in the future as well." President Bruininks (Daily: 6-18-08)

"The Board of Regents and the administration of the University made it clear years ago that it would not tolerate undisclosed, simultaneous full-time employment," Rotenberg said.

"As a matter of fact, Julie and I have not even signed an employee contract yet with Minnesota. ... We have only agreed to unofficially start this semester with full residence starting in May."

Francois Sainfort February Email

But the couple had already begun working full-time for the University of Minnesota at that time, according to documents. Mark Rotenberg, the general counsel for the U of M, said the couple's compensation and contracts at Minnesota began Oct. 1.

"To say that access to the hospital is easy isn't really accurate,'' said Regent Maureen Cisneros. Added Regent David Metzen: "Any way you look at Washington Avenue, it's a mess today.''

PiPress 6/14/08

Regent John Frobenius said the Washington Avenue line would be "a dagger through the heart of the University of Minnesota."

Frank Cerra[AHC VP] heaped praise on the Washington Avenue route. He said the car-free stretch would improve the quality of life on campus...

"Nothing would please me more than to grab a cup of cappuccino, grab a Viennese hot dog and play a game of bocce on the way to work," Cerra told regents.

PiPress 6/12/08

"Bruininks said he didn't know of a university in the United States that was doing something[MoreU Park aka Muscoplat's Folly] as 'courageous and innovative.'"

"Regent David Metzen said he thought the future of the project is the most important decision to face the University in the last 15 years." (Daily - 6/13/08)

The language of the bill stipulates that the Board of Regents must not raise fees or tuition “beyond the amount currently planned for the 2008-2009 academic year.”

Faculty Legislative Liasons, May 19, 2008

Faculty salaries, which aren't included in the $292 million, will be paid with multiple funds, Cerra said, including cost reductions, internal reallocations and support from partner organizations.

The University is competing with schools like Berkeley, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Wisconsin and Michigan, he [Cerra] said.

"They're going to lose a lot of friends at the Capitol if they jack up that tuition," he [Tom Rukavina] said. "They're pricing themselves out of work if they keep going up 7.5 percent."

Despite Rukavina's intent to keep tuition low, Pfutzenreuter stands by the fact that the Legislature can't decide how the University spends its money.

And in response to Pfutzenreuter:

"Tell him to sue me," Rukavina said. "It's in the bill, tell him to sue me."

University documents show that the proportion of nontenured, part-time faculty teaching at the University increased 10 % [to 45%] between 2003 and 2007.

Bruininks said students feel the impact of the top-three initiative in the sense that it's a "different approach for education."

"In nearly all of our fields, I think students benefit from learning from faculty members who are on the cutting edge of their fields," he said. "It makes the education we provide distinctive and very special."

"For an individual, $1 million is frequently a starting point for salary and start-up money. If you're doing research with a group, it could be $10 million, $15 million, up to $25 million. That's the nature of the marketplace."Frank Cerra

"A million here, a million there, pretty soon you are talking about real money..."

"We will try to piece this together in regard to whether something serious has indeed happened here in regard to so-called double-dipping."

Mark Rotenberg, U of M general counsel

Under the leadership of Provost Sullivan, the University community articulated "an ambitious aspiration for the University—to be one of the top three public research universities in the world [sic] within a decade."

"What separates the top three from the rest ... including the University of Minnesota, is relatively little."

Robert Bruininks

Vice President Brown noted that the President has said that the top three is an aspiration for excellence, not a destination.

Why are the buildings needed?

"This is an effort by the university to grab market share" of federal research dollars, Pfutzenreuter said.

"Is this a time to be talking about getting into the top three? When units cannot maintain their research capacity, how can they get to the top three? There is little to suggest that the University is on an upward trajectory."

Senate Research Committee, October 8, 2007

“There have been a lot of false statements made about tuition increases.He [Sullivan] said the discussion should focus on the marginal average cost to students of a tuition increase, factoring in tuition discounting, scholarships, fellowships, and other financial aid support.”

Faculty Consultative Committee

Thursday, January 24, 2008

In his presentation Friday to the Board of Regents, Bruininks said that 60.5 percent of students graduating in four years get loans to pay for their education and the average debt is about $20,500.

Of 10 schools the university considers its peers, Minnesota has higher resident tuition than Wisconsin, Ohio State, UCLA, California-Berkeley, Florida, Texas and Washington. Only Penn State, Michigan and Illinois have higher price tags.

Wisconsin's resident tuition is currently more than $2,400 cheaper than Minnesota. Iowa residents pay about $3,300 less at the University of Iowa than Minnesotans do at the university.

Minnesotans pay twice as much as the national average to get a public college education, but they're not getting double the results.

Fewer than 40 percent of students at Minnesota's colleges and universities graduate in four years, according to a report released this week by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education. In addition, students of color have less than a 50-50 chance of graduating at all.

So much for leadership at the University. As one of the attendees at the hearing on the Central Corridor put it:

“University students will be in no more danger than drunken Vikings fans downtown who have to deal with light rail at grade.A transit mall will be the best decision ever forced on the U of M.”

"I've heard some of the 'doubters' say things like, 'I'd settle for best in the Big Ten," he [Bruininks] said. "Students don't choose the University of Minnesota for (a) mediocre future."

Sullivan said the goal's value for current students is clear. It'll be even more impressive to have the school listed on your résumé, he said.

"People will begin to talk about the University of Minnesota in a world conversation, in China, in India, all of the places that are emerging as great markets," Sullivan said. "The University of Minnesota's name will be in that small group of universities."

Provost Sullivan is a graduate of Drake University and Indiana University. President Bruininks graduated from Western Michigan and the George Peabody College for Teachers.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Trees Do Not Grow to The Sky or, Why the State Legislature Should Not Write a Blank Check to BigU forBiomedical Research BuildingsMr. Bonzo has been concerned for some time that the money for biomedical research just isn't there, and that the push for a blank check from the legislature for the construction of more buildings for this purpose is a serious mistake.The most recent issue of Science has an article, selections of which are quoted below. This is done in the belief that fair use applies since a direct link cannot be given.

20 APRIL 2007 VOL 316 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org

The percentage of research proposals funded by NIH has dropped from 32% in 2001 to a projected 21% this year. Funded grants are routinely cut by 10% or more.

Dozens of investigators interviewed by Science, along with six NIH institute directors and agency head Elias Zerhouni, describe a climate in which young scientists struggle to launch their careers and even the most senior are trimming their research projects. Harold Varmus, a Nobel Prize winner who led NIH from 1993 to 1999 and is now head of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, has had his grant cut, although he won't say by how much.

Meanwhile, research institutions everywhere were breaking ground on new facilities and expanding their faculty. In a 2002 survey, AAMC found that new construction at medical schools had exploded: From 1990 to 1997, schools invested $2.2 billion in new construction, compared to $3.9 billion from 1998 to 2002. But that paled in comparison to what was to come: an expected $7.4 billion in new construction from 2002 to 2007.

Schools hired new faculty members to fill the buildings, expecting to recoup their investments from the NIH grants investigators would haul in. "Universities and their leadership did what I would have done too," says Zerhouni. "The government is indicating support for these activities," and the expansion was "exactly what Congress intended."

Yet the numbers fail to convey the gnawing unease and foreboding expressed by scientists across disciplines and at every stage of their careers. "The ripple effect here is amazing and paralyzing," says Steven Dowdy, a cancer biologist at the University of California, San Diego. At Brown University, molecular cell biologist Susan Gerbi, who helps oversee graduate training, canvassed 49 faculty members in eight departments recently, as she does every year, to see how many would take on a graduate student from next year's pack. "In the past, it was a majority," around 90% of those who responded, she says. "This year, only about 25% of the trainers said they would be interested … because they did not have a guarantee of funding for next fall."

Compounding the problem is that most universities and medical institutions rely on NIH money for the bulk of scientists' salaries and overhead costs and are not set up to support faculty members long-term. Traditionally, "bridge funding" could tide researchers over for a few months. But now, more scientists than ever are having to resubmit grant applications, with a gap of 8 months or more in between each submission. At NIAID, the percentage of proposals funded on the first try has gone from 27% in 2001 to 11% in 2006.

What brought biomedical research to this place of financial anxiety? The doubling flooded NIH with billions more dollars over a relatively brief time. Whereas a private corporation might conserve some of this windfall, by law NIH must spend nearly all the money it receives the year it receives it. That provoked a massive expansion in biomedical research, and expectations of federal support surged to a level that could not be sustained when the budget stopped growing. The crash is hitting labs, careers, and the psyches of scientists with a vengeance.

The big bubble

Nine years ago, Congress set out to double the NIH budget and within 5 years sent it soaring from $13.7 billion to $27.1 billion. But everyone knew the golden days would not last. In October 2000, eight senior scientists and policymakers began meeting informally to discuss how to maintain the momentum. In 2002, the group published a commentary in Science presenting different budget models and their impacts on research priorities (Science, 24 May 2002, p. 1401). Its most pessimistic prediction modeled annual increases of 4%. Says David Korn, a former Stanford University dean now at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in Washington, D.C., who helped bring the group together: "We didn't model increases below 4% a year because the tradeoffs and the sacrifices that would have been caused … were too difficult for us to deal with in the model."

At NIH, senior officials found that "no matter what, there will be pain after the doubling," says Zerhouni, who became NIH director in 2002. To soften the blow, in 2002 and 2003, NIH tried to accelerate the pace of one-time expenditures such as construction, to free up money for the following years. But even "in the worst scenarios, people really didn't think that the NIH budget would go below inflation," says Zerhouni, an outcome he attributes to the 9/11 attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Hurricane Katrina.

This appears to have helped drive more applicants to NIH. In 1998, fewer than 20,000 scientists sought research grants from the agency; in 2006, that number was more than 33,000, and according to NIH forecasts, the number of applicants is expected to top 35,000 in 2007. The number of applications has grown at an even faster clip, as scientists, concerned about their chance of getting funded, are submitting proposals more frequently. Because growth at medical schools lagged somewhat behind the doubling, many institutions are still expanding. At Sloan-Kettering, for example, officials only recently began filling a new building with scientists. They expect to increase their faculty by almost 50%, says Varmus.

But as requests for NIH money edged upward, NIH's resources began to drop. After a 16% increase in 2003, the final year of the doubling, NIH received a 3% boost in 2004, an abrupt reversal of fortune. Although the general rate of inflation in 2006 was 3.1%, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the cost of goods and services in biomedical research and development rose 4.5%. The number of competing grants NIH funded peaked in 2003 and has been dropping since. The declining value of NIH's dollars and rising demand were "a perfect double whammy," says Zerhouni.

Some schools are beefing up their bridge funding. Dana-Farber, for example, is setting aside $3 million to $4 million this year. Historically, the institute reserved $500,000 to $1 million "and almost never spent it," says Benz, Dana-Farber's CEO.

Even "the senior investigator is turning out to be a challenge for us to support," Benz continues.

Many scientists complain that the tough funding climate is exacerbated by an excessive focus at NIH on costly "big science," such as the Cancer Genome Atlas, which is using large-scale genetic sequencing to decipher the molecular basis of cancer and whose 3-year pilot phase is budgeted at $100 million. Projects like this one, many scientists say, are coming at the expense of grants that sustain individual labs and have been the source of much innovation over the years.

Nowhere does the funding gap seem wider than when looked at through the lens of age. "It's just about inconceivable for a brand-new investigator to get an NIH grant funded on their first submission these days," says David Sweatt, chair of the neurobiology department at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Sweatt has hired three young scientists in the past year and worries about their future. "I see it as this dark shadow hanging over people who are just starting out their labs," he says. "They're having to spend so much time being anxious over funding, to the detriment of having time to think creatively about their research."

It is time for a serious and honest conversation about this matter at BigU.